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South Korea's Suneung Is Dropping 'Killer Questions': The 2026 Reform and the 2028 Overhaul

On the day of the Suneung, South Korea stops. Parents pray. Flight paths are rerouted. Commuting hours are adjusted. In South Korea, the Suneung β€” the College Scholastic Ability Test β€” is not just an exam. It is a national event, a pressure point, and a source of perpetual debate. And at the center of that debate in recent years: "killer questions." What are they, why did they become controversial, and what is the government doing about them?

Table of Contents

  1. What Are Killer Questions?
  2. The 2026 Suneung: Year Two of the Exclusion Policy
  3. Can the Reform Actually Reduce Private Tutoring?
  4. The 2028 Suneung: A Structural Overhaul
  5. The Future of the Suneung: Should It Be Abolished?

1. What Are Killer Questions?

"Killer questions" (ν‚¬λŸ¬ λ¬Έν•­) are the notoriously difficult problems placed near the end of each section of the Suneung to differentiate among the very top scorers. On the surface, they are drawn from the high school curriculum β€” but in practice, they require conceptual leaps or logical approaches that go well beyond what a typical high school curriculum covers.

The core problem: solving these questions with school instruction alone is essentially impossible. Students are pushed toward expensive private supplementation β€” cram schools (hagwons), online lecture series, private tutors β€” that can cost hundreds of thousands of Korean won per month. The result is a built-in advantage for students whose families can afford it, and a structural encoding of economic inequality into the admissions process.

2. The 2026 Suneung: Year Two of the Exclusion Policy

The 2026 Suneung (administered in November 2025) was the second year of the government's policy of excluding killer questions from the exam. Kim Chang-won, the head of the question-setting committee, addressed this directly at the official briefing:

"This year's exam was designed at an appropriate level of difficulty, and questions that favor students who received private tutoring were excluded. We did not include questions that reward exam techniques taught in private academies. The exam was developed so that sufficient differentiation could be achieved solely through content taught in public education."

The intended signal is clear: students who focus on public school instruction should be able to compete without needing to supplement through expensive private channels. Reactions in practice have been mixed β€” some educators noted that the exam felt harder in new ways, while others welcomed what they saw as a shift toward public education alignment.

3. Can the Reform Actually Reduce Private Tutoring?

The true goal of the killer question exclusion policy is to reduce reliance on private tutoring. South Korea's private education spending sets record highs with depressing consistency, and the tutoring industry's relationship with the Suneung is central to why.

But critics raise important counterpoints:

  • Eliminating killer questions doesn't eliminate the need for differentiation. Private tutoring companies will simply develop new strategies for the new question types β€” potentially generating more tutoring demand, not less.
  • Differentiation among the highest-achieving students may become more difficult.
  • As long as the exam structure itself remains unchanged, the private tutoring industry will adapt rather than retreat.

The root of private tutoring demand lies in the competitive university admissions system itself β€” not in any single question type. Adjusting question formats is a partial measure at best.

4. The 2028 Suneung: A Structural Overhaul

The bigger transformation is coming in 2028. The South Korean government has announced a structural overhaul of the Suneung beginning with the 2028 cohort.

Integrated Humanities and Sciences

One of the most significant changes: students will be required to sit for both humanities and science subjects. Under the current system, students effectively split into humanities-track and science-track versions of the exam through elective subject choices. From 2028, that division will disappear β€” a return, in some respects, to how the Suneung worked in its earlier years.

Addressing Standard Score Disparities

The current Suneung uses standardized scores rather than raw scores, but the system has generated well-documented fairness problems: the distribution of scores varies depending on which elective subjects students choose, giving some students higher standardized score ceilings than others. The 2028 reform is designed to address these imbalances.

5. The Future of the Suneung: Should It Be Abolished?

The most radical proposal has also now been aired: Seoul's superintendent of education has publicly called for abolishing the Suneung entirely by 2040. The argument is that a single high-stakes exam distorts twelve years of education and prevents genuine learning from taking place.

Whether this idea gains traction remains genuinely uncertain. University admissions policy is not a question the Ministry of Education can resolve alone β€” it intersects with university autonomy, employer expectations, and deeply entrenched assumptions held by students and parents alike.

But the fact that this conversation has begun matters. It signals that the Suneung is no longer treated as an immovable institution β€” it is now understood as a social agreement, and social agreements can be renegotiated.

The Suneung changes a little every year, but the fundamental tension β€” fair differentiation versus equal opportunity without private tutoring β€” remains unresolved. Removing killer questions is a beginning, not a solution. True educational reform must answer bigger questions than which items appear on a test. What do we want to assess? What do we actually want to cultivate in young people?

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South Korea's Suneung Is Dropping 'Killer Questions': The 2026 Reform and the 2028 Overhaul | MINSSAM.COM